Alastair Masser: DOGE is a blunt tool – but an increasingly popular one

Dr Alastair Masser is a Director at Trafalgar Strategy and a former Government special adviser.

In the weeks since its creation, the new Department for Government Efficiency (DOGE) claims to be saving US taxpayers a staggering $1 billion a day. Elon Musk’s new fiefdom has been wielding the axe (or is that a chainsaw) across Washington DC and beyond, terminating cherished government programmes in what one unnamed official termed a ‘bonfire of the bullshit.’

DOGE has had an immediate and bombastic impact. Diversity, Equality, and Inclusion (DEI) programmes across the federal government are no more. Elsewhere, whole agencies like USAID have seen their future thrown into doubt. Scores have also been settled – a $168,000 grant to fund an exhibit of Dr Anthony Fauci at the National Institutes for Health Museum has been consigned to the scrapheap.

Recent revelations paint a sorry picture.

A close look at the books has found that social security cheques may have been routinely issued to almost 1.5 million claimants apparently over the age of 150. Meanwhile $20 million had been earmarked to create an Iraqi version of Sesame Street, while $86,000 of Covid-relief funding for schoolchildren was somehow spent on Las Vegas hotel rooms.

True to form, Musk is revelling in his new role as slasher-in-chief and inspiring an army of devotees.

But DOGE’s popularity extends well beyond the MAGA faithful. A recent focus group of voters in the swing state of Arizona found that eight out of eleven approved of Musk’s progress so far. His fledgling department has already amassed over 4 million followers on his very own X social media platform, compared with the six million followers of the long-established State Department and Department of Defence.

To date, this popularity has helped DOGE avoid serious scrutiny. Spurious claims like the $50 million programme to provide condoms to Gaza have been disproven with few repercussions, while Democratic legal efforts to challenge its access to federal data have stalled. This is at least in part because of the sheer pace at which Musk’s department has been dumping huge volumes of material into the public domain. This blitzkrieg has helped him to win the all-important communications battle, with a majority of voters believing that DOGE is serving the public interest.

Sure enough, the rest of the world is taking notice. In the UK, DOGE has spawned a series of copycats in outlets like Guido Fawkes and the Sun. Charlotte Gill formerly of ConHome has been doing this for some time and now BrewDog founder James Watt has unveiled Shadow Doge, which he claims will use FOI requests and tips from whistle-blowers to expose wasteful spending.

Already, there appear to be no shortage of examples, including £2.7 million earmarked for a new mansion for the Governor of Monserrat, as well as questionable spending on everything from ministerial travel to migrant accommodation.

For too long, the sheer scale and complexity of government spending in the US and elsewhere has deterred people from looking too closely at where the money goes. This has resulted in a fatalism towards budget deficits – neither the US nor the UK has achieved a surplus since 2001 – and resignation to the fact that governments waste colossal amounts of money. There is no doubt that DOGE is mobilising new voices in what had become a tired debate over government spending. By uncovering obvious and indefensible examples of waste, it has grabbed voters’ attention in a way economists’ talk of deficits and debts cannot.

As inconvenient as it may be for our politicians, it is not unreasonable to scrutinise where taxpayer money goes. Voters have grown tired of hearing about seemingly endless cycles of tax rises and spending cuts, all against a looming backdrop of growing deficits and debt. Musk’s claim that he would claw back as much as $2 trillion in two years is almost certainly outlandish. But it demonstrates that the notion of government efficiency doesn’t have to be laughably oxymoronic.

In his second inaugural address, Donald Trump promised America ‘a revolution of common sense’. DOGE’s shock and awe campaign has shown that common sense is not routinely applied to spending decisions.

Its growing popularity shows that whilst voters might not always know what their taxes are spent on, they do care.